Some extraordinarily incompetent and/or unethical examples of science journalism.
" Why don't journalists link to primary sources? Whether it's a press release, an academic journal article, a formal report or perhaps (if everyone's feeling brave) the full transcript of an interview, the primary source contains more information for interested readers, it shows your working, and it allows people to check whether what you wrote was true. Perhaps linking to primary sources would just be too embarrassing. Here are three short stories. "

" Watson's gloom, Saletan's technophilla, and the Harvard 3L's email draw attention to the irony that genetic explanations of racial disparities remain resilient ten years after the Human Genome Project was supposed to have ended such conversations. It's a reminder that science alone cannot solve every social problem. "

" Dr. John Kessler, director of the Feinberg Neuroscience Institute at Northwestern University, said one of the biggest obstacles is the public’s high expectations, and the common belief that stem cells will immediately lead to new treatments for disease.

" “There is no question in my mind that stem cell biology is going to revolutionalize the way we practice medicine,” Kessler said. “It’s not going to happen with the kind of time frame that people want. It’s not going to happen tomorrow. It’s not going to happen next year.” "

" Ronald Reagan's death from Alzheimer's disease Saturday has triggered an outpouring of support for human embryonic stem cell research. Building on comments made by Nancy Reagan last month, scores of senators on Monday called upon President Bush to loosen his restrictions on the controversial research, which requires the destruction of human embryos. Patient groups have also chimed in, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) on Tuesday added his support for a policy review. "

" The quote was from Ronald McKay, a stem cell researcher at the National Institutes of Health, and the topic was human embryonic stem cells. In an interview I did for The Washington Post in 2004, I asked McKay why so many people kept talking about the possibility that injections of stem cells into the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease might someday cure these people when, in fact, the scientific consensus at the time (and still today) was that such injections were unlikely to benefit such patients. ... “To start with, people need a fairy tale,” McKay told me. “Maybe that’s unfair, but they need a story line that’s relatively simple to understand.” "

" A dangerous idea has taken hold in modern politics, and the sooner it is discredited, the better. The idea is that political disagreements can be resolved by science. Its basic logic seems sensible: As good children of the Enlightenment, we should turn to science to establish the facts about problems such as climate change before deciding what policies to implement. Yet the types of things that scientists are good at figuring out don't have much to do with the types of things that politicians need to decide. "

" I have to repeat that. The word for people who are neutral about truth is "liars". It shouldn't be "scientists". It shouldn't be "humanists". "

" As I said earlier, this is about taking sides with truth. It’s about being knowledgeable enough to make a decent stab at uncovering the truth and presenting the outcomes of that quest to one’s readers, even if that outcome lies firmly on one side of a “debate”. "

" Yes, there is a strain of thought among scientists where some really do think that more information and refuting bad science will result in the public changing their mind. It is naivete, of course, naïveté that is the mirror image of Chris Mooney's naïveté when he proposed that scientists can get anywhere "building bridges" to anti-vaccine loons. In a way, it's a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Mooney's calling scientists naive while at the same time demonstrating an astonishing naïveté himself! "

Bruce Lewenstein comment:
" In a 1987 column in The Scientist (13 July, p. 12), examining the bust of the “science boom” (in popular science magazines) of the early 1980s, I argued that “the perception of boom and bust…has obscured an underlying issue: the whole concept of ‘popular science’ may be an arrogant mistake on the part of the scientific community. The fact is that ‘science’ qua science is interesting only to science professionals.” I argued that we needed to learn to “present science without demanding that nonscientists accept the scientific world view.”

" Isaac Asimov responded in a letter to the editor that he had read my column “with puzzlement…. How does [Lewenstein] expect to do that? Does he want us to explain that photosynthesis works by magic? That if we pray hard every night a cancer will cure itself?” My favorite part of the letter is Asimov’s conclusion: “By Newton, I’d rather be ‘arrogant’ than stupid.”

" I tell this story neither to defend nor to reject my original position (either of which would require much more space). Partly I want to point out that Chris’s argument is about a deeply fundamental issue that has been with us for decades and is unlikely to be easily resolved. "

" The August issue of the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment features open-access articles that review research, define challenges, and propose new initiatives in the area of science communication with a focus on environmental controversies. Over the past several years, there has been increasing attention to communication and public engagement at flagship science journals. The special issue of Frontiers represents the most comprehensive discussion and examination to date. "

" On Saturday April 24, 2010, the American Physiological Society sponsored a symposium on Trends in Animal Rights Activism and Extremism. This event, attended by about 100 people, was part of the Experimental Biology 2010 meeting, which was recently held in Anaheim, California. In introducing the symposium, session chair Bill Yates noted the importance of animal welfare, and the obligation of human beings to provide for the well-being, humane care, and judicious use of animals in research. However, some individuals reject the notion that research with animal models plays a critical role in advancing our understanding of biological processes and is essential to the search for cures. Some with this belief use tactics such as violence and intimidation to prevent researchers from conducting studies using animals. The intent of the symposium was to inform researchers about the tactics of animal rights extremists and what researchers and their institutions can do to protect themselves and their work. "

" Time has come for the scientific community to make a concerted effort in condemning animal-rights extremism and in reaching out to the public to explain our work, its importance, and our commitment to the strictest ethical guidelines of animal research. A special effort should be made to emphasize the irreplaceable role for nonhuman primates in neuroscience research to the public. "

" Talking to the public remains crucial. Sometimes, the threat of violence means that individual researchers will not wish to engage directly with the public and should even be cautioned against doing so. But there is no excuse for institutions that house animal research — including most research universities — not to have vigorous and well-defined programmes to explain what goes on within their walls. Institutions should publicize the high standards that they are required to meet before they can use animals. They should also discuss their strategies to replace animals with more sophisticated research tools, refine research practice and reduce the overall number of animals used. If they have no such strategies, institutions should develop them as a priority. "